Janet Quin-Harkin by Fools Gold

greatest gamble man has ever undertaken?”
    “That’s different,” Libby snapped.
    “In what way?”
    “In my world it is not considered acceptable to cheat at cards,” she said bluntly.
    “You call it cheating because I do it better than most.”
    “I saw you,” she said, looking at him without blinking. “I saw you bring the queen from your sleeve.”
    “Really?” he asked. He still looked amused. “Then you have quicker eyes than most. Would you swear to the fact that I brought a card from my sleeve? You actually saw me extract it?”
    Libby considered it. She had seen the slightest of movements, but. . . . “You had a queen and a five,” she said. “Then you had two queens.”
    His smile broadened. “One thing you must learn, if you intend to travel into the West,” he said, “is that it is not etiquette to look over a man’s shoulder while he is playing cards. Men have been gunned down for less.”
    She looked at him in amazement. “You are not even repentant,” she exclaimed. “You admit your guilt.”
    Gabe sighed. “You know little of human nature, Mrs. Hugh Grenville,” he said. “The young fool was driven by greed, much farther than he should have gone. He’d won enough—I’d let him win enough, but he was convinced he could clean me out, that he was smarter than me. I had to show him I was the smarter. They never know when to quit, you see. That’s how I make my money—I trade on greed. Is that so wrong?”
    “It is to me,” she said.
    “Then we must beg to differ,” Gabe said. “You will find, I think, that this is not Boston, Libby. In this world there is precious little honor, few men you can trust, and no guarantee that life will not finish tomorrow with a bullet in the back.”
    “Then if I were you, I would rather be the one spark of honor in a dark world,” Libby said. “If I feared death at any moment, I would rather be prepared to meet my maker.”
    “I do not fear death,” Gabe said, “and I am as ready to face my maker as any man that I know.”
    “I don’t think there are any card parlors up in heaven,” she said dryly.
    “No? Then it will be a very dull place,” Gabe said. “Besides, I think I like warmth. Perpetual fires sound rather more appealing.”
    “You are incorrigible.”
    “And you, Mrs. Hugh Grenville, are quite delightful,” he said, laughing. “I hope I can persuade you to like me better.”
    “Fortunately you will not get the chance, Mr. Foster. After this voyage we will never see each other again,” she replied and stalked past him to her cabin.
    For the rest of her time on board, Libby stayed in her cabin or sought out the company of the other women passengers, suffering through long and boring accounts of their troubles with servants and dressmakers and their varied illnesses, rather than risk coming face to face with Mr. Gabriel Foster again. When they docked in St. Louis she hurried the children ashore and made her way along the levee to find the first ship going up the Missouri to Independence.
    In her diary she wrote: May 30,1949.1 have learned a valuable lesson. From now on I take nothing at face value. When I meet the next Mr. Gabe Foster, I will be ready for him!

CHAPTER 5
    T HE NEXT SHIP was very different from the Mississippi Belle . Up to this point the journey had presented relatively few of the hardships and dangers which had been rumored in the drawing rooms of New England. Libby’s safe arrival in St. Louis almost convinced her that the end was in sight. Soon she would set off on the wagon train to California and find Hugh and live happily ever after. Her introduction to the steamer Amelia made her realize that maybe the real journey was just now beginning.
    On the dockside a frightened mule had broken free from its owner and was braying loudly while it kicked out at the stacked piles of freight around it. From the lower deck of the ship came the bawl of oxen, the braying of mules, and the shouted curses of the